Forward Impact Engineering

Surface Capability Gaps Before They Cause Failures

You need to find capability gaps in your team before someone gets set up to fail -- not after a post-mortem reveals them. This guide walks through three complementary views: structural risks, coverage trajectory, and growth alignment.

Prerequisites

Complete Make Staffing Decisions You Can Defend first. That guide covers roster setup, role requirements, coverage analysis, and what-if simulations. The steps below build on that foundation.

Detect structural risks

The risks command surfaces three categories of structural weakness in your team's composition: 

npx fit-summit risks platform --roster ./summit.yaml

Expected output:

  platform team — structural risks

  Single points of failure:
    infrastructure — only alice.chen holds practitioner level [low]
    incident_response — only bob.kumar holds working level [low]

  Critical gaps:
    observability — no engineer at working level
      core skill for software_engineering discipline.
    capacity_planning — no engineer at working level
      broad skill for software_engineering discipline.

  Concentration risks:
    delivery skills — 3 of 5 engineers at J060 working level

Each category tells you something different:

  • Single points of failure name skills where exactly one engineer holds working-level proficiency or higher. If that person is unavailable, the capability disappears.
  • Critical gaps name skills that the team's disciplines and tracks require but no one covers at the working level. These are the gaps that surface in post-mortems.
  • Concentration risks flag groups of engineers clustered at the same level and proficiency in the same capability area, creating a bottleneck where everyone has the same ceiling.

When a single point of failure involves a part-time allocation (below 1.0), the severity is elevated. A [high] severity means the sole holder is allocated less than half-time to the team.

Track coverage over time

A point-in-time risk snapshot tells you what is fragile now. The trajectory command shows how coverage has changed across quarters, revealing whether gaps are forming or closing: 

npx fit-summit trajectory platform --roster ./summit.yaml --quarters=4

Expected output:

  platform team — capability trajectory

  Roster changes:
    2025-Q2: 5 engineers (no changes)
    2025-Q1: 5 engineers (dana.wu joined)
    2024-Q4: 4 engineers (no changes)
    2024-Q3: 4 engineers (eve.park left)

  Coverage evolution:
    skill                   2024-Q3 2024-Q4 2025-Q1 2025-Q2 trend
    api_design              3       3       4       4       improving
    capacity_planning       0       0       0       0       stable
    incident_response       1       1       1       1       stable
    infrastructure          1       1       1       1       stable
    observability           0       0       0       0       stable
    system_design           2       2       3       3       improving
    task_decomposition      2       2       3       3       improving

  Persistent gaps: capacity_planning, observability

The persistent gaps line names skills that had zero depth across every quarter shown. These are the gaps most likely to cause failures -- they are not new and they are not trending toward resolution.

Trajectory requires a version-controlled summit.yaml so Summit can read historical roster snapshots from git.

Compare teams to find relative weaknesses

When you lead multiple teams, a gap on one team may be covered by another: 

npx fit-summit compare platform delivery --roster ./summit.yaml

Expected output:

  Comparison: Platform vs Delivery

  Skill                 Platform depth   Delivery depth   Delta
  task_decomposition    3                4                -1
  estimation            2                1                +1
  incident_response     1                3                -2
  system_design         3                1                +2
  api_design            4                2                +2

  Risks unique to Platform:  infrastructure (single point of failure)
  Risks unique to Delivery:  estimation (single point of failure)

Unique risks are the ones to address first -- no other team compensates for them. When both teams share the same gap, the problem is organizational, not team-specific.

Identify growth opportunities that close gaps

The growth command recommends which team members are best positioned to close the gaps you found: 

npx fit-summit growth platform --roster ./summit.yaml

  platform team — growth opportunities

  High impact (addresses critical gaps):
    observability
      dana.wu (J060, foundational) or carlos.ruiz (J060, foundational) could develop this skill.

  Medium impact (reduces single points of failure):
    infrastructure
      bob.kumar (J060, awareness) or dana.wu (J060, awareness) could develop this skill.

  Low impact (strengthens existing coverage):
    incident_response
      carlos.ruiz (J060, foundational) or dana.wu (J060, foundational) could develop this skill.

Recommendations are grouped by impact. High-impact items address critical gaps -- skills nobody covers. Medium-impact items reduce single points of failure. Low-impact items strengthen existing coverage by adding depth.

Each recommendation names the team members closest to the target proficiency. Growing someone from foundational to working is a shorter path than growing from awareness.

Strip names for broader audiences

When sharing risk or growth reports beyond the direct team, use the --audience flag to control individual-level detail: 

npx fit-summit risks platform --roster ./summit.yaml --audience director

  Single Points of Failure:
    infrastructure            1 engineer (practitioner)
    incident_response         1 engineer (working)

  Critical Gaps:
    observability             No engineer at working+

Names are replaced with aggregate counts. The structural findings remain the same.

Verify

You have completed this guide when you can answer these questions from your Summit output:

  • What are the team's structural risks right now? You have run npx fit-summit risks and can name the single points of failure, critical gaps, and concentration risks.
  • Are gaps forming or closing? You have run npx fit-summit trajectory and can identify persistent gaps and coverage trends.
  • Which gaps are unique to this team? If you lead multiple teams, you have run npx fit-summit compare and can distinguish team-specific risks from organizational ones.
  • Who is best positioned to close the gaps? You have run npx fit-summit growth and can name the recommended growth paths for high-impact gaps.